


Seam Ripper Heart

by ERNest



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: Cages, Captivity, Gen, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Quantum-Entangled Realities, Self-Determination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29205699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: Explanations are largely unnecessary when as far as she’s aware she has always existed, but the Golden Witch can’t help picking at the seams of herself.
Kudos: 5





	Seam Ripper Heart

A created creature picks at the seams of herself. She cannot remember ever having been anything other than human, and even originating from a test tube her skin is a seamless organ, with not a stitch to be found. Even her glorious golden dress, refitted every year in time for her annual checkup, shows the work of human hands. Her body alone is perfect, and the kindly old doctor confirms it, telling her every time he sees her how pleased he is to see her in such good health.

The great Lady Beatrice, master of the mansion of Kuwadorian, does not have the words for clone or robot or experiment or stem cell, or any of a thousand hypotheses that might explain her existence. Even ‘test tube’ was probably a mistake made by some well-meaning servant, the near truth an easier answer to the question of where people come from than first explaining what parents are and then explaining why she’s never seen hers.

Anyway, explanations are largely unnecessary when as far as she’s aware she has always existed, for at least the past thousand years, and will likely persist for a thousand more. She has always been human but at the same time she has always known about the witch. No one has ever told her about the soul attached to hers, and in fact they turn away whenever she wonders if she is a part of the witch or the witch is a part of her, but she knows they all know the truth.

Try as she might, Beatrice can still only remember being herself, but she is trying to awaken her past lives so she can pick apart the seams connecting her to them, and finally recreate herself with the freedom of being an individual woman. She may keep the magic if she likes how it feels on her, but Beatrice is different from Beatrice is different from Beatrice, even if it sounds like she’s just said the same name three times in a row. And sometimes you have to distinguish things in order to connect them. It takes two to make a world.

Finally, somewhere between dreaming and hoping and imagining, it happens. A young girl remembers a different girl, _much_ younger, sobbing her heart out because she broke a precious and irreplaceable vase. The hallway and grounds of her mental space are suspiciously similar to those of her own home, but as the only person with access to her visions, she is not suspicious. Why should she be? For all she knows, all mansions and all vases are exactly alike.

Just before she returns to her waking state, the world freezes, and her with it. Every particle of dust hangs suspended; every energy wave stills; every molecule, atom, electron, and quark ceases spinning; and a black cat leaps through a window in reality that was only shadow a moment before. The cat, now a girl, looks around briefly before seeming to come to the conclusion that she’s arrived in the wrong place, or else in the wrong time. With a motion like knocking a vase off a cabinet, she vanishes again, and time resumes as scheduled.


End file.
